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XI.

IDEAL AND ATTAINMENT.

CONCLUSION.

WHAT we have thus set forth from Scrip

ture and experience we would wish to see made real in Christian life. But we are sensible that to live a truth is far more difficult than to expound it. And yet it is to be borne in mind that doctrine is not the measure of experience, but its mould. For example, instead of aiming at self-crucifixion as the goal of our endeavour, we start from it as our point of departure. "I have been crucified with Christ," writes Paul. Here is the doctrinal or judicial fact on which he rests and from which he proceeds. And how constantly is he reiterating it as a truth applying to all believers without distinction. Because we thus judge that one died for all, therefore all died." + And what is his conclusion from this solemn judicial fact? This, that we are to strive with all diligence to make it a realized and experimental fact. "For ye died, mortify therefore your

* Gal. ii. 20 (R. V.).

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† 2 Cor. v. 15 (R. V.).

members which are upon the earth.” That is to say, we are to make that true in ourselves which is already true for us in Christ, and so turn a fact of doctrine into a fact of attainment. And this principle applies to resurrection equally. "Raised together with Christ," we are to "seek those things that are above"; † that is, to live the resurrection life in Him instead of holding to the fallen life in Adam.

It is true that

Now it is already true that the Holy Ghost has been given; therefore we are to receive Him in His indwelling fulness and power. all believers are sanctified, for Paul addresses the Corinthian church in its entirety as "those that are sanctified in Christ Jesus"; therefore are we to seek with all diligence to be sanctified in ourselves, that our whole soul, body, and spirit may be presented blameless before the Lord at His coming. Here, readers, is what we mean by the "two-fold life." It is Christ's work for us, on the cross, on the throne, and in the clouds, on the one hand; and Christ's work in us, by His Spirit, by His Word, and by His ordinances on the other. And the high endeavour, the life-long task which is set before us in the Scriptures, is that of conforming our inward experience to our outward standard, or in the expressive words of Paul, “ Of apprehending that for which we are also apprehended of Christ Jesus." With us, Christian attainment is not a † Col. iii. I.

*Col. iii. 3 (R. V.).

tentative, uncertain thing. God does not say to each one of us, "Be what you can be; and since each man is architect of his own fortune, reach forth to the end for which you are best fitted." Nay; God never talks to us, as men do, about being the architects of our own fortunes; but He holds up before us that archetype of our spiritual fortune which He has fashioned for us, and declares that this must so certainly be wrought out in us that He counts it done already, saying, “For whom He did foreknow He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son. Moreover, whom He did predestinate them He also called; and whom He called them He also justified; and whom He justified them He also glorified." "*

It should be an occasion of sincere gratitude, we believe, that the great evangelistic movement now going on is emphasizing so strongly the doctrine that justification and assurance rest on the external work and the external word of Christ. Inquirers are told to look for the evidence of their salvation to what the Redeemer has done for them on His Cross, and to what He has said to them in His Testament, and not to what they can discover going on within their hearts. This is the true doctrine of justification by faith which it was the work of the Reformation to revive. Faith never draws attention to itself, but points ever to the finished work of Christ. "Therefore being justified

*Rom. viii. 30.

by faith."-But the "therefore" carries the thought back to the preceding verse, and throws the whole weight of our confidence on the accomplished fact therein stated; "Who was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification.”

*

The Wesleyan revival of a hundred years ago laid weighty emphasis on the doctrine of the inward witness. This was necessary and inevitable in a movement which reacted so strongly from the barren Externalism then prevailing in the Church. But we have the impression that in the course of time this emphasis became excessive and oppressive, and tended to put upon anxious souls a burden greater than they could bear. How many of us remember in our Own conversion the persistency with which our gaze was directed within, and how painfully we were set to watch our spiritual exercises to find the evidences of our acceptance. But now the pendulum has swung quite to the opposite extreme, and our most effective revival preachers disparage all trust in frames and feelings, telling sinners to look to Christ on the Cross, instead of searching for Christ in the heart; to receive the testimony of the Word to their acceptance, when they have believed, instead of searching for the testimony of consciousness. This we strongly believe to be the true gospel. And there

*"Look to the wounds of Christ, brother Martin, look to the wounds of Christ, and there you will see how God feels toward you."Staupitz to Luther.

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is so much the more need of giving the other phase of doctrine its true place, in order to preserve the balance of truth. We should urge the seeking of the witness of the Spirit, not as the ground of faith, but as the fruit of faith. Paul has given us the two-fold life in a single paragraph in the Epistle to the Galatians—“For ye are all sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus." "And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father."*

It seems to us that the old Puritan writers held together these two sides of truth, and preserved their balance to a remarkable degree. They expounded most clearly the objective work of Christ, and they also unfolded His subjective work, with a minuteness and a depth of insight quite beyond anything we witness in our day. And they wrote thus clearly because they had apprehended these things by a profound interior experience. What tide-marks do the diaries and meditations which these good men left, furnish of the heights to which the Spirit's floods rose in their souls! We have a great lesson to learn of them concerning the culture of the inner life.

Reading the high discourse of John Howe on "The Blessedness of the Righteous," "Delighting in God," and "The Redeemer's Tears," we instinctively inquire for the spiritual autobiography of this man who writes so divinely. We are dis

* Gal. iii. 26; iv. 6.

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